Jun. 19th, 2014

Jun. 19th, 2014

A brief history of fandom, for the teenagers on here who somehow think tumblr invented fandom:

1960s: with the advent of Star Trek, fandom moves into the public sphere for the first time with a television in almost every home, creating a large group of people all excited about one thing. This means conventions, mailing groups, fan magazines, and fanfiction presses.

Yeah this pretty much remains the deal until the internet gets put into every home in the 90s.

So with the internet, this really cool thing happened: Geocities. And then Yahoo groups. Early fanfiction archives. Back in the day, fandoms had to create their own private spaces. This made fandoms on the internet smaller and less accessible than fanzine operated ones. However, since fans on the internet didn’t have to pass through an editorial board to publish their fic, it was the beginning of the democratization of fandom.

In 1998, fanfiction.net was launched to compete with the hundreds of independent, fandom-oriented fanfiction archives. More democratization, although fanfiction was marketed on how many reviews one had. You had to, like today, “break into the market.”

In 1999, Livejournal was launched. Fans created communities and their own private journals which was like woah, we have our own places to store our own fic? And can cross-post them places? However, with Livejournal came the idea of the BNF: big name fan. Since communities had moderators and posts could be friend or community locked, people could easily gain social capital.

See also: Cassie Claire and misscribe.

On the other hand, authors like George RR Martin get Livejournals.

Around this time was also the rise of forums. Again, moderators had a lot of power, as did certain users who would rise to the position of moderator. People rapidly gained and lost power, causing quick turnover in these parts of fandom.

In 2002, due to legal concerns, fanfiction.net bans NC-17 fanfiction.

Adultfanfiction.net is created to fill the void. For years, 13 year olds would pretend to be 18 to enter. Including myself.

In 2005, fanfiction.net, again due to legal concerns, bans “choose your own adventure” and songfics.

In 2007, Archive of Our Own is launched to further democratize fandom in response to fanfiction.net’s new stringent rules, offering writers a cleaner format, kudos, hit counters, and bookmarks. However, many older fandoms have not made the move.

In 2007, tumblr is launched. It would take until 2010 for it to reach saturation on the internet, meaning that most fandoms which lived and died pre-2010 exist(ed) on Geocities, Yahoo Groups, independent archives, ff.net, etc.

In 2009, Geocities is taken offline. Thousands mourn because they never backed up really old fic that they liked.

In 2012, most major broadcasting companies have caught on to the fact that tumblr has democratized fandom to a degree of anarchy and mob mentality, and utilize it, since tumblr is unmoderated.

And that’s what you missed on FANDOM EXISTED BEFORE TUMBLR, THANK YOU VERY MUCH.

i don’t know about you, but i grew up seeing mostly white dolls that looked nothing like me. in fact, even the few black dolls i saw looked nothing like me. they had super straight hair, and sometimes blue or green eyes. where was the barbie doll with brown eyes and beautiful curly, kinky hair?

well now, i found a DIY tutorial that allows you to make even the doll with the finest hair, look a little more like you.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED:

A doll

End papers (sold at beauty supply shops)

Pipe cleaners

Scissors

Boiling water

Note about end papers: If you start with a doll that has long hair and you plan to make a style similar to the style shown in my picture, you won’t need end papers, they’re optional. But if you start with a doll that has shorter hair and don’t plan to cut it any further, end papers will be essential.

1. Cut pipe cleaners into two-inch pieces and bend each one in half. They will look like little “V” shapes.

2. Section off a piece of hair and twist it into a tight spiral. The smaller the sections, the tighter the curls will be.

3. Wrap the spiral in an end paper (optional)

4. Place a pipe cleaner onto the scalp and pull the twisted section into the crook of the pipe cleaner. Be sure to keep the hair spiraled tightly as you zig-zag it.

5. When you finish zig-zagging each section, twist the pipe cleaner ends around each other to lock everything into place.

fully wrapped head

6. Once you have all the sections in pipe cleaners, dip the head in boiling water for the count of ten.7. Wait for the head to cool – usually a few hours, but overnight is best. Rinse in cold water and place doll in freezer if you want to speed things up.8. Take the pipe cleaners out.9. If you have length to spare, trim each section to get rid of straight ends or strays.

feel free to leave it like this, or pick it out and make your doll’s fro as big as you desire. i don’t know about you, but i’m definitely going to be doing a few of these for my little cousin, who is currently very insecure about her own beautiful curly hair.

okay, do I ignore the pornblog that reblogged my personal post so I don’t ever have to see them again, or do I *not* ignore them so I can see if they reblog anything else from me since they’re following me and it’s creeping me the fuck out.

Today’s nails start with a base coat of ‘Ariel’ from @lynbdesigns Disney Princess collection. Then I used diamond glitter from @bornprettynail to do some glitter placement. I like how sparkly they are!

newleasemylove replied to your post:okay, do I ignore the pornblog that reblogged my…

Personally I would want to be able to keep tabs on it, but it may upset you less not to see it bb

Yeah, I decided not being able to know if they reblogged stuff would be creepier. and I talked to persephonesidekick about it which helped with the understanding just why it felt so violating and creepy.

like I don’t even understand why they would want to reblog my introspections. there wasn’t anything remotely sexy about it - the only thing they could possibly be getting off on is my inexperience and intrigued confusion, which. feels really creepy and predatory and violating in all sorts of ways.

it feels like they’d also consider my meltdown posts porn, and that just really creeps me the fuck out.

the universe did not converge in the series of improbable events that ended in your existence on this flying rock in the middle of space so that you could discredit the identity of teenage bisexual girls